MORE THAN FOUR decades ago, I had a peek into life inside a kalari— where the ancient martial art form of Kalaripayattu is taught—along with my cousins who were around four or five years old back then and were practitioners. There were both girls and boys in the group, girls in their underwear and boys in their loincloth (konakam). They were all around 4-5 years old. Girls would disappear from these places upon attaining puberty, which in those years was age 13 or so. While gurukkals (the term used for the instructors) seldom imposed any gender restrictions, adolescent girls, generally shy by disposition, would stop turning up mostly out of familial pressures.
Things have been changing for a while now, and girls and women of all ages and various nationalities, some of them in their 40s, attend kalaris in loose trousers or a dress code of their choice to learn Indian combat techniques that were developed long before the Chinese martial arts. There are claims that Kalarippayattu is from where Shaolin Kung Fu emerged. Some claims, rejected as ahistorical by some historians, suggest that the founder of Shaolin Kung Fu and Zen Buddhism, the Indian monk Buddidharma—called Tamo by the Chinese—was a master of Kalaripayattu. Some studies suggest that the techniques used in this martial art form resemble those from the Sangam period (600BCE to 300CE).
Interestingly, teenage girls and women, according to oral history as well as some local historians, used to regularly practise Kalaripayattu before its “lost years”. The term stands for a period when the British banned the practice, from around 1805 until it resurfaced in the 1920s in Thalassery, part of Kannur district in northern Kerala. It saw a major revival in the 1970s. In fact, according to noted historians, the British banned Kalaripayattu following the Kottayathu War, a rebellion against British rule led by Pazhassi Raja, a king. The ban was necessitated after the British observed local men and women warriors fight valiantly, displaying gravity-defying acts and expertise with swords and other weapons. Most kalaris shut shop after the ban, but a few of them continued to run secretly, ensuring that the martial art form was not lost completely.
In Northern Ballads (‘Vadakkan Pattukal’), which are a collection of songs that narrate the heroics of warriors during the peak of the popularity of Kalaripayattu, tales of women do come up often, the most famous of them all is about Unniyarcha, who lived in the 16th century. Local Kalaripayattu historians say the ban achieved partial success: it obliterated a large chunk of oral history about the martial art form. Malayali historian Sreedhara Menon states that medieval Kerala saw the “golden age” of Kalaripayattu. The main characters, women included, were feted in these ballads for their fighting skills, courage, and idealism. In her work, Rethinking Chivalry and Courtly Love, Jennifer G Wollock writes, “The ancient Indian martial art of Kalaripayattu is still practised in Kerala in southwestern India as well as adjoining regions and in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. It is especially associated with the Nair and Thiyya warrior castes.”
There is a flip side to these heroics. We will come to that later.
Padma Shri winner Meenakshi Amma, who is also called Meenakshi Gurukkal, is now 80 years old. She started attending the kalari when she was just seven. Her guru was Raghavan Gurukkal, the founder of Kadathanadan Kalari in her village in Vadakara in Kozhikode district, adjacent to Kannur. Kadathanadu is the erstwhile region that now falls in Kannur and Kozhikode districts. It is home to folk tales of Chekavars (warriors who often fight to the death) and other kalari exponents. At the age of 17, Amma married her guru and continued to teach martial arts to hundreds of students, male and female, every year. Her husband died in 2007, and she took on the reins of the training institution. She regrets that he did not live long enough to see her become a Padma awardee in 2017. “All the awards and recognition came thanks to his determination and single-minded effort to popularise Kalaripayattu. He used to teach almost for free and did not do it for monetary gains, but out of devotion,” says Amma who says one of her sons, a businessman, is also a Kalaripayattu teacher. All her four children, including her daughters, are trained in Kalaripayattu.
Read More at https://openthemagazine.com/cover-stories/the-wonder-women-of-malabar/